Postoperative Computed Tomography Evaluation of the Bone Bridge after Secondary Bone Grafting into the Alveolar Cleft

—A Study of Prognostic Factors—

Abstract

In recent years, some reports on postoperative computed tomography evaluations of secondary bone grafting into the alveolar cleft have been published. Here, we report a retrospective study on the prognostic factors of bone bridge formation after secondary bone grafting into the alveolar cleft, evaluated with computed tomography.
In 13 cases, we evaluated the bone bridge formations at a total of 9 points: each of the 3 points of the buccal, central, and palatal sites in 3 different height slices of the central incisor in the cleft side (root tip, middle, and alveolar crest).
The frequencies of bone bridge formations were as follows: all cases in middle/buccal, 9 (69.2%) in middle/central, 8 (61.5%) each in root tip/buccal and alveolar crest/central, 6 (46.2%) in alveolar crest/buccal, 5 (38.5%) in middle/palatal, 4 (30.8%) in alveolar crest/palatal, and 3 (23.1%) each in root tip/central and root tip/palatal. Moreover, a univariate logistic regression analysis clearly showed that the preoperative width of the alveolar cleft could be a predictive factor of postoperative bone bridge formation in the central and palatal regions at the middle height of the tooth root.